Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
Part 6A, Part 6B, Part 7A, Part 7B
Part 8A, Part 8B, Part 9A, Part 9B
Part 10, Part 11
Gustave Doré. The Fall of Lucifer
Those of us raised in Soviet times were taught from childhood that pride is just about the main virtue of a Soviet man. Remember: “Man. That has a proud sound;” “The Soviets have their own pride—they look down from high on the bourgeoisie.” Indeed, pride is at the heart of any rebellion. Pride is the sin of satan, the first passion that appeared in the world even before the creation of men. And the first revolutionary was satan.
When the angelic world was created, the Heavenly hosts, the one highest and most powerful angel, Lucifer, didn’t want to be in obedience and love for God. He became proud of his power and strength and desired to become like God himself. Lucifer drew many angels after him and there was a war in Heaven. The Archangel Michael and his angels battled with satan and defeated the hosts of evil. Satan-Lucifer fell like lightning from Heaven to the underworld. And since then, the underworld, hell, is the place where the dark spirits dwell, a place devoid of light and the grace of God.
A rebel-revolutionary can’t help but be proud—he continues the work of Lucifer on earth.
Communism is a quasi-religion, and like any confession, it has its own creed and commandments; its own “relics,” “icons,” banners and processions, demonstrations. The Bolsheviks intended to build paradise on earth, only without God. And of course, any idea of humility was considered ridiculous and ludicrous. What humility can there be when “we will destroy our old world, we will build a new world, and he who was nothing will become everything?”1
However, God is not mocked, and history itself held court over the Bolsheviks. It didn’t work to build paradise without God; proud ambitions were put to shame. But although communism fell, pride didn’t become less of a problem—it simply took other forms. It’s just as hard to talk with modern people about humility. After all, a market capitalist society oriented on success and career growth is also based on pride.
Although in Confession, when the priest asks about the sin of pride, he often has to hear a reply like, “What? I don’t have any pride.” One woman wrote to St. Theophan the Recluse: “I was talking with my spiritual father and I told him many things about myself. He said straight out that I’m proud and vainglorious. I told him that I’m not proud at all, but I can’t stand humiliation and kowtowing.” And this is what the Holy Hierarch told her: “You sang beautifully. Don't let them offend you, so they know they can’t push you around. Look what he thought calling you, and to your face at that? Now I’ll give you my verdict: What better proof could there be that you’re proud than your retort? It’s not the fruit of humility. And why do you resist such a judgment?... It would be better for you, without arguing, to resolve to look into yourself carefully, whether you really are infected with this extremely harmful poison.
So, what is sin and how does this sin manifest? Let’s turn again to St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov), who says that pride is “contempt for your neighbor. Preferring yourself to all others. Audacity. Darkening and dulling of mind and heart. Pinning them to earthly things. Blasphemy. Unbelief. Knowledge falsely so-called. Disobedience to the law of God and the Church. Following your carnal will. Reading heretical, depraved, and vain books. Disobedience to the authorities. Biting mockery. Abandoning Christ-like humility and silence. Loss of simplicity. Loss of love for God and man. False philosophy. Heresy. Godlessness. Ignorance. Death of the soul.”
Judgment and Condemnation
St. John Cassian says that although pride comes last in the list of the eight passions, “by origin and time, it comes first. It is the most savage and most indomitable beast.”
In the list of passions, pride comes after vainglory, which means it stems from this vice, it originates in it. “A flash of lightning foretells a thunderclap, and pride is foretold by the appearance of vainglory,” instructs St. Nilus of Mt. Sinai. The search for futile, vain glory, praise, and excessive self-esteem gives rise to self-exaltation over others: “I’m above them, more worthy; they’re below me.” This is pride. Condemnation is also associated with this feeling. If I’m above everyone else, it means I’m more righteous and everyone else is more sinful than me. Inflated self-esteem prevents us from judging ourselves objectively but helps us be a judge of others.
Pride, which began with vainglory, can reach to the depths of hell, for it is the sin of satan himself. None of the passions can grow to such an extent as pride—this is its main danger. But let’s return to condemnation. To condemn means to judge, to anticipate the judgment of God, to usurp His rights (this is also terrible pride!), for only the Lord, Who knows a man’s past, present, and future, can judge him. St. John of St. Savvas Monastery tells the following story in the Prologue:
Once a monk from the neighboring monastery came to see me, and I asked him how the fathers were doing. He replied: “Well, by your prayers.” Then I asked about a monk who didn’t have a good reputation, and he told me: “He hasn’t changed at all, Father!” When I heard this, I exclaimed: “That’s bad!” And as soon as I said it, I immediately felt like I was in rapture and saw Jesus Christ, crucified between the two thieves. I was hastening to worship the Savior when He suddenly turned to the angels standing before me and said: “Cast him out; he is an antichrist, for he condemned his brother before My judgment.” And as I was being cast out by the word of the Lord, my mantia got caught and left behind in the doorway, and then I woke up. “Woe is me,” I said to the brother who had come, “this day is evil for me” “How so?” he asked. Then I told him about the vision and noted that the mantia left behind means that I was deprived of the protection and help of God. And from that time, I spent seven years wandering through the deserts, neither eating bread nor taking shelter nor conversing with any man until I saw my Lord return my mantia to me.
This is how fearful it is to judge another. Grace departed from this ascetic simply because he said, “That’s bad!” about the behavior of a brother. How many times a day do we give our merciless evaluation of our neighbor in thought or word! Every time we forget the words of Christ: Judge not, that ye be not judged (Mt. 7:1)! At the same time, we of course say in our hearts: “I would never do anything like that!” And quite often, the Lord humbles us in order to correct us, to put our pride and desire to condemn others to shame.
In Jerusalem, there was a virgin who spent six years in her cell leading an ascetic life. She wore a hair shirt and renounced all earthly pleasures. But then the demon of vainglory and pride aroused in her a desire to condemn others. So the grace of God abandoned her because of her excessive pride, and she fell into fornication. This happened because she labored not out of love for God, but for show, for the sake of vainglory. When she became intoxicated by the demon of pride, her guardian angel, the guardian of her chastity, left her.
Very often, the Lord allows us to fall into precisely the same sins for which we condemned others.
Our evaluations of others are quite incomplete and subjective; we not only can’t look into their souls, but often know nothing about them. Christ didn’t condemn obvious sinners—neither fornicators, nor adulterers, because He knew these people’s earthly paths weren’t over yet and they could still move to the path of amendment and virtue. Only the judgment after death draws the final line on everything a man has done in his life. We see how a man sins, but we don’t know how he repents.
One day, I was returning from the cemetery where I had been asked to serve a panikhida, and a woman called me over and asked me to bless her car. One of my friends was there for the blessing. When the woman left in the new, now blessed, foreign car, he threw out the line: “Yeah, it doesn’t look like she worked very hard in order to buy that car.” I told him that this woman had great grief, that her son was recently killed… We must never judge the state of someone’s life by outward appearances.
Pride and Schism
Nowadays, there are many murmurers (as the Apostle Jude calls them) who constantly find reasons to be outraged at the Church hierarchy. The Patriarch, you see, communicates too much with the secular authorities, the bishops are all infected with greed and simony, priests only think about income and drive around in their Mercedes. Special newspapers and websites have appeared that specialize in denouncing the episcopate. They feel like the times have already come when “the hierarchs will no longer believe in the Resurrection of Christ.” A supposed complete decline in piety and ecclesiastical life.
What motivates these people? Pride. Who gave them the right to upbraid hierarchs and priests, and what do these rebukes give? They only sow enmity, confusion, and division in the hearts of Orthodox people, who, on the contrary, need to unite now.
There have always been unworthy people amongst the priests and bishops, not just in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Let’s turn to the “golden age” of Orthodoxy, to the age of holiness and the flowering of theology. The fourth century gave us such pillars of the Church as Sts. Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the Theologian, Athanasius of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, and many, many more. And here’s what St. John Chrysostom writes about that golden age:
What could be more lawless than when people who are unfit and full of many vices receive honor for doing things for which they shouldn’t be allowed to cross the threshold of the church?... Now the rulers of the Church suffer from sins… Lawless men, burdened with a thousand crimes have invaded the Church and publicans have become rectors.
Many of the holy bishops of the fourth century, including St. John himself, were sent into exile by robber councils of bishops, and some died in exile. But none of them ever called for schism and division. I’m sure several thousands of people would have followed the deposed hierarchs if they wanted to create their own “alternative church.” But the holy men knew that the sin of schism and division can’t be washed away, not even by the blood of martyrdom.
Our modern accusers don’t act like this—they prefer schism to submission to the hierarchy, which immediately shows that they’re driven by the same pride, which lies at the heart of any schism. How many schismatic, catacomb churches there are now, calling themselves Orthodox! “The True Orthodox Church,” “The Truest Orthodox Church,” The Truest True Orthodox Church,” and so on. And because of their pride, every one of these false churches considers itself better, purer, and holier than all the rest. The same passion of pride motivated and motivates the Old Believers. They’ve fragmented into a huge number of Old Rite “churches,” interpretations, branches, that have no communication between them. As St. Theophan the Recluse wrote: “Hundreds of bumbling interpretations and thousands of discordant concords.”2 This is the path of all schismatics and heretics. By the way, all of Old Believer-ism is based entirely not on love for the old rite, but on pride and a high opinion of their exclusivity and correctness and hatred for Patriarch Nikon and his followers, the Nikonians.
But let’s say a little more about the “murmurers.” They should recall the words of St. Cyprian of Carthage: “He who does not have the Church for his Mother does not have God for his Father.” The Church was, is, and will be, despite the unworthiness of some hierarchs, who, as I already said, have existed in all ages and times. God will judge them, not us. Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord (Rom. 12:19). And there’s only one thing that can fix the Church—our personal piety. After all, we’re the Church too. “Save yourself and thousands around you will be saved,” said St. Seraphim of Sarov. And he knew this from his own spiritual experience. Such people are the little leaven that leavens the whole dough. A small amount of yeast can raise an entire batch of dough. But, incidentally, from my own observations, “murmurers” typically struggle with personal piety and morality. Yet they have pride in abundance.
To be continued…
